On 25 May 2014 European citizens are called to vote to renew the European Parliament. In Belgium this day is ‘the mother of all elections’ since all legislative assemblies are to be renewed simultaneously. The 2014 Belgian general elections give the opportunity to study political recruitment in a context of co-occurrence of elections. The paper aims at comparing candidate selection for the European Parliament to both federal and regional candidate selection. 11 Belgian political parties are analysed thanks to a comprehensive analysis of party statutes, in-depth interviews with key selectors as well as media analysis. European parliamentary elections are traditionally second-order elections. However, new electoral rules in Belgium provide that these are the only elections with nationwide candidates. The paper assesses how political parties manage the allocation of candidates across three levels of power, especially in terms of processes of decision-making within parties.
